Friday, September 16, 2005

Smelly Feet and Air-Conditioned Room

“You are doing work in your office, concentrating on a complicated formula on the screen and suddenly…there was a bad smell on the air. You look up (to the air condition vent) and down (to your shoes, just to make sure you did not step on anything suspicious), Nah..that’s not it. You turn to your left and you see your colleague have just opened her shoes and is working with bare feet. Now, you know the source of the bad smell”

I do not know what others but I think it is really rude to be opening your shoe, knowing it is going smell bad in an air-conditioned room. I have never opened my shoes as long as I remember. Some feet just smell bad, sometimes worse than smell of a dead animal on the side of the road. Of course, when I “tegur” this people, they will say that their feet is sweating and that’s why they opened their shoes.

There are couples of things that people can do to avoid smelly feet, I do this and I dare say that I can open my shoes without people complaining about the smell:-

1. Wash the shoes and dry them out in the hot sun on periodic basis

2. If the shoes need not be washed (because it clean enough), just dry them out in the sun. A good sunlight kills the odor-causing bacteria. I will dry up mine once a week on Saturdays when I am not working.

3. For god-sake, go to a shoe shop and buy anti-bacteria spray. Some of it is less than RM10.00 and works well to kill the bacteria and also “perfumes” the shoes at one go.

4. For those who can spend more, just buy an activated charcoal or odor absorbing insoles as a layer to rest your feet. It absorbs sweat and bad odors fast. It also helps to extend the life of the shoe’s original insoles.

5. Change the “bloody” socks. I change almost everyday but I know some guys (some bachelor friends of mine) who wear the same socks for a week (and some beyond)

6. Although I don’t use talcum powders on the feet to assist in absorbing the extra sweat but I heard that it helps in absorbing the sweat.